Howie Roseman commented this weekend that the Eagles made an active, preemptive decision to prioritize the position of their selections in next year’s NFL Draft over this year’s. Why? Evidently because the talent is expected to be better next year.
The rationale behind this seems to be that with fewer college underclassmen than usual declaring for this year’s draft, the talent pool this draft was smaller than it was in the past, and that this will no longer be the case next year. Is this correct? Probably. Roseman’s probably right. Unless I’m misunderstanding his remarks or they were more offhand than I realize, Roseman has probably put more research into this than I have. He was looking at the draft class itself. He scouted its prospects. Still, let’s examine this rationale. Because it implies something about college football as well.
The two cited reasons fewer underclassmen declared were NIL and the extra eligibility awarded to athletes during Covid. The first, NIL, definitely alters the flow of talent to the NFL. NIL reduces the urgency for athletes who need or want money for their performance. As for the second, Covid eligibility: Is this really affecting the number of *underclassmen* declaring?
Maybe.
It would have to be through a roundabout way.
Unless I’m really missing something, the underclassmen number everyone is citing—“58 underclassmen declared this year…”—is strictly for players who are only three years out of high school. Those players entered the draft early in the traditional sense. They finished the fall of their academic junior year and moved on to the pros before their senior season. Again, unless I’m really missing something, these are players who entered college football beginning with the 2021 season, one that isn’t covered by the 2020 season’s eligibility waiver. Caleb Williams. Drake Maye. Marvin Harrison Jr. Joe Alt. 54 other guys, including well-known college names like Bucky Irving and Will Shipley who went later in the draft.
Even though these players didn’t have extra Covid eligibility of their own, it’s possible the phenomenon lessened the number of juniors who declared this year. The roundabout way is this: With more fifth-year players in college these last three years, this junior class has received reduced playing time, leaving a higher portion than usual not yet ready for the NFL.
Ultimately, the underclassmen piece is a bit of a red herring. Even if we exclude the underclassmen question, it remains possible the extra Covid eligibility drained this year’s talent pool. This has been happening for a few drafts now, with both NIL and Covid eligibility established phenomena, but fewer fourth-year seniors went the draft route this winter than otherwise would have, sometimes because they had the extra eligibility themselves, sometimes because they had that eligibility and—like the juniors below them—hadn’t developed as much or gotten as much exposure thanks to fifth-years above them on the depth chart using their own Covid eligibility to keep playing. This could have happened with fifth-year seniors as well, thanks to redshirts. Even a couple sixth-years, with the medical redshirt possibility. NIL multiplies the draw. Covid eligibility might make staying more necessary. For those who entered the college game before the 2020 season or earlier, Covid eligibility enables the possibility of staying in the first place. Of course, there’s a reverse effect to this piece. It’s been easier for seniors to stay in school, but that’s been the case for four years. Some of those players who’ve used Covid eligibility—Jayden Daniels, Michael Penix Jr., and Bo Nix, to name names—became first round picks as a result of their extended college stay. Sometimes, Covid eligibility pulls a talented player out of a draft class. Sometimes, it pushes a different talented player into the same one. It goes both ways.
How will this change over the coming years?
The NIL piece isn’t going to shift. NIL spending is still finding its equilibrium, but it’s impossible to know right now whether it’ll be a stronger or weaker attractive force next December for players choosing between college and the NFL. NIL is here, and it will remain here.
The Covid eligibility effects—both the direct ones and the ripples—will work their way out gradually, but will mostly work their way out soon. Unless I’m wrong about which seasons were and weren’t covered by Covid eligibility in which sports, rising seniors this fall who never redshirted will be the first players since December 2019 to exhaust four years of eligibility in four seasons of football. If my count is correct, the last players to have possibly used Covid eligibility will play their last season in the fall of 2026, after which—if eligibility rules are the same—we’ll go back to six years being the max, the seasons awarded to a once-redshirted and once-injured player. That means sixth-years in the 2033 NFL Draft class will have had no way of playing with a player still there thanks to Covid eligibility. The average NFL Draft age might be different in 2033 than it was in 2020, but Covid eligibility will no longer be the reason why.
Again, most of this will be worked out in the short-term future. NFL teams are drafting the option to play these players for the next four or five years. At a lot of positions, players age out of their prime by their late 20s. Still, it’s a big, complicated thing. Overall, you have:
- NIL making it more attractive for players to stay in college, delaying some entries by a year. It’s hard to know if this made the 2024 draft weaker or stronger than 2025’s. Its effect is probably wobbling as the market finds a steady state.
- Covid eligibility making it possible for players to stay in college, again delaying some entries. This works both ways. Jayden Daniels was not in the 2023 draft. He was in the 2024 draft. This made the 2023 draft a little weaker and the 2024 draft stronger. This will go away very soon. We should be entering one of the last years in which it’s a factor. Will the 2025 draft see even greater benefits than 2024’s? It’s hard to see why it would, but maybe this is what Roseman’s getting at.
- Covid eligibility’s ripple effects limiting the development and exposure players enjoy early in their time in the college game. Crowded rosters crowd out opportunities, delaying the emergence of NFL prospects. Over time, this will go away, and there should be a strengthening of draft classes as talent emerges at a younger age once more. This seems to be what motivated Roseman and the Eagles to make their moves. There aren’t a lot of other explanations. They must think that the effect of this ripple effect is going to make the 2025 draft see a new wave of young talent we haven’t been seeing as much of these last few years. If it doesn’t—if the situation is steadier than Roseman implied—the Eagles might have made a lot of trades for nothing, or Roseman might have just thrown out the draft class talk because he wanted an easy motivation to pin behind the trades.
Anyway. If Roseman’s right, there should be a lot of talent in college football this fall.
House v. NCAA: A Settlement?
There isn’t a lot of detail about this, but ESPN pushed a report last night that the NCAA and power conferences are working on settling House v. NCAA, the lawsuit where former ASU swimmer Grant House and other athletes are suing the NCAA for restricting their earnings through the forbiddance and then regulation of NIL.
Again, there isn’t a lot of detail, but there’s a vague expectation that this potential settlement will lead to some form of revenue sharing. Will it? We don’t really know. What’s happening to the backpay issue of that lawsuit, the one where these athletes wanted the money they could have gotten from NIL? Again, don’t know. We’ll monitor. The news last night was basically that Charlie Baker, the power conference commissioners, and the lawyers suing on behalf of House and others started meeting about possible solutions.
The Rest
MLB:
- It’s April 30th, which evidently means it’s time for our customary terrible Mike Trout news. He’s having knee surgery. He has a torn meniscus. That’s not usually season-ending, but it’s a bummer. We haven’t seen Trout play more than 140 games in a year since 2016. He’s still been unbelievably good overall—the guy has more WAR since the start of 2021 than Pete Alonso, who’s been healthy and averaging 40 home runs a season—but he just keeps missing time. Sad situation.
- In other sad situations, José Abreu has been playing so badly that the Astros have demoted him to their spring training site to try to get himself right. Tough development for one of the more respected guys in the game. To some extent, this should have been expected—Abreu was below replacement-level last year—but he was also a .304 hitter in 2022, and he’s at .099 so far this season. Crazy dropoff after leaving Chicago. Would love some theories on why it might have happened.
The NBA:
- Darvin Ham seems to be the designated scapegoat in Los Angeles, and that’s fine. Ham’s gone the excuse route, and he does seem a little lost out there. But is LeBron worth the hassle? What if he takes up two roster spots, with his not-NBA-caliber son potentially a package deal with him? Whoever employs LeBron next season is going to get a top-20 player expecting strong control over the rest of his roster and ready to passive-aggressively handle any push against that notion. If a team likes its own situation and LeBron likes it too, then great, there’s a match. But if that isn’t out there, LeBron is going to want some customization power. Even if it is out there, he’s liable to change his mind once the season’s underway. At this point, is he really worth it? It only seems to make sense for franchises who either 1) aren’t in a great position to rebuild quickly anyway and might as well push the chips in for a second-round ceiling or 2) have the capacity to rebuild in the snap of a finger, because of their power in free agent markets. The second does apply to the Lakers.
- The Celtics saw both Jayson Tatum and Kristaps Porziņģis go down last night, and while Tatum sounds to be fine, Porziņģis is going to miss two or three weeks with the same calf injury plaguing Giannis Antetokounmpo. For Boston…this is probably fine? The Celtics are in a good position in that there appear to be two contenders in the East—themselves and whoever wins the Knicks/Sixers series. Joel Embiid’s suffering migraines. Bojan Bogdanović is done for the season. There are other injuries to both those rosters. As long as Porziņģis’s injury is what it’s supposed to be, he should be back around the start of the Eastern Conference Finals. That’s all the Celtics really need. Unlike the Nuggets, they face little threat from their second round matchup
The NHL:
- I don’t have much of a take on goalie interference, but the smart people I’ve seen talk about last night’s calls against the Lightning seem to believe the rule is the problem? Generally, bad rules seem to get fixed in sports. Either way, the Panthers look potent.
- It was lost a little with the Nuggets and Lakers coming down to the wire, but the Stars and Knights played a tense third period. Even series headed back to Dallas for tomorrow night’s Game 5.
- In tonight’s Games 5, we’ve got four teams facing elimination to close out the month of April. Most likely the last four-game evening of these playoffs, so if you’re into that, enjoy it while it’s here.
Chicago:
- How about Jameson Taillon last night? It was lost a little in the near-no-hitter from Severino and the heroics from Christopher Morel (who’s been struggling to get results but has consistently smacked the ball), but Taillon pitched great. Big, big outing from Jameson Taillon.
